10By Peter Koenig
“EXIT NATO!” – was the glaring title on a huge screen greeting the several hundred participants of the Anti-NATO Conference in Florence, Italy, on 7 April 2019. Officially it was called The International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, sponsored by Global Research of Canada and the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). I had the privilege to attend this important forum.
Following the EXIT NATO poster, was another huge slide decorating the conference wall – proclaiming that NATO, as a reward for all their work for Peace, should be rewarded with the Peace Nobel Prize. No doubt, nuclear armament and eventually nuclear wars – to be fought by NATO – by whom else – will make the world a safer place. Wars are actually good for Peace. They are also good for economics, but they are particularly good for Peace.
I’m not kidding you – these are declarations one can read – and has been able to read since practically 9/11, in such prominent “Truth News” papers like the Washington Post and the NYT. – So, why not the Peace Prize to NATO? – It wouldn’t make much difference, considering the track record of the Nobel Prize Committee – it would fall right into place.
Other than that, the conference basically outlined the atrocities committed by NATO, its associate and crony terrorist armies, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra – and so on, changing names for revolving terrorists, recruited and trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, and of course the US directly or through her many State Department funded and subsidiary NGOs, like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and many others. And of course, not to forget a prominent funder of terrorism, Turkey – who is now trying to make a smiling face to Russia and the east, even flirting with the idea of entering the club of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); on the one hand purchasing Russian military defense systems – the S-400 – and at the same time US fighter planes F35, dancing on as many weddings simultaneously as they can. – Who would trust Turkey under Erdogan? – Turkey also still hosts one of the most strategic and most dangerous nuclear-equipped NATO bases – literally between east and west.
The Conference recalled the Cold War. By now everybody knows – really? – well, for those who don’t – that the so-called Cold War was one of the best propagated and fakest news of the 20th Century. It’s a brilliant idea that sprung out of the McCarthy Nazi-era – like NATO itself – to arm the US to the teeth – maximizing profits of the military industrial complex, under the pretext of halting the advancement of the Soviet Union into just liberated western Europe, just liberated from Hitler’s Nazi-Germany. Never mind that western Europe has been saved by the Soviet Union who lost 25-30 million people and basically their transport and production infrastructure. Yes, it was not the so-called allies – US, UK, and France – they came in last, when the bulk of the job was already done by what is today Russia. But of course, no western history book would tell you the truth. In fact, it must be said here too – the US funded Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union with money channeled from the FED, through Wall Street banks, and eventually through the Rothschild dominated Bank for International Settlement (BIS), located in Basel, Switzerland, right at the border to Germany, from where it was easy to pass the money on to the Reichsbank – Hitler’s Central Bank. Yes- that’s how the US was already then dancing on various fiestas at the same time; on the one hand bombing Germany and, on the other, financing Germany’s war against what the US already then perceived as an archenemy – The Red Scare – the Soviet Union. Well, these acts of treason then were the precursors of NATO today.
Anything socialist is evil for the US, still today. Trump himself and his minion clowns, Pompeo, Bolton, and Pence – are lambasting Venezuela and Cuba for being evil and destructive socialist countries – and that socialism will not be tolerated nowhere by the falling empire – sorry, falling it is – of the United States of America.
The other purpose of the Cold War farce, was to make the Europeans believe that they were under a constant threat of a Soviet invasion, that they had to arm themselves also to the teeth – imagine war-recovering Europe having to spend their money on arms for no use! – and of course most of these weapons had to be bought – yes, you guessed it – from the US military industrial complex – more profit for the war oligarchs. The Anglo-media giants even created a virtual barrier between western “free” Europe and the bad-bad Red Scare, the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain. Yes, the Iron Curtain; children in school were indoctrinated to be aware that the enemy is hiding behind the Iron Curtain, and that the enemy always comes from the East. Hilarious, when you think back. At that time (almost) everybody believed it.
And the third, or perhaps first objective of the Cold War, was to block the Soviet Union from developing a viable and autonomous economy with which they could thrive, as most socialist countries do, until they are boycotted, punished and financially “sanctioned” into suffocation – by the west. These illegal financial manipulations with and within sovereign countries’ economies, are, of course, illegal by any standards of international laws – laws that have become meaningless in the light of US / NATO power, scary nuclear power. These acts of financial and human rights high crimes are only possible, because of the all dominating, fraudulent US-imposed – and NATO-protected – western monetary system.
The NATO-driven Cold War, a constant nuclear threat towards the Soviet Union, was intended to force Russia also to arm for their defense, instead of being able to use their economy’s added value to rebuild their devastated country. The USSR was never a threat to Europe. There was never an intention of the Soviet Union to invade western Europe. The same today, we are being made believe that Russia wants to invade Europe – that’s why NATO needs to build all these military bases, at the doorstep to Russia. Russia is by far the largest country, territory-wise, in the world, they don’t need to add more land. Historically, neither Russia or China have a record of expansionism.
In the end, the NATO-led Cold War managed to dismantle the Soviet Union by ‘buying’ some corrupt Soviet leaders, so that the new Russia, whose socialist system just was made to collapse, unprepared with legislation for what was to come – privatization by fire-sale of their entire economy. Like vultures, the financial institutions, IMF, World Bank, agents of the FED, descended on Moscow to literally steel by indebting whatever had any value. This misery still has not entirely abetted, as the Russian Central Bank was restructured, following the image of the FED – today, under President Putin, much has changed and was reformed, however, the financial sector is still heavily invaded by the Atlantists – or what you may also call the Fifth Columnists. And of course, even those are protected by NATO – as NATO issues threats, nobody knows from where they come – but you know who executes them, in case of…
The Florence Anti-NATO Conference also recalled some of the most abject killing sprees of NATO in its 70 years of existence, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine – the Maidan massacre followed by the so-called Ukrainian civil war – and the crowning of sorts, the ten-year war on Yugoslavia – the total destruction of Yugoslavia, with the final blow 1999, the merciless bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. – Why Yugoslavia? – Let’s dwell just a moment on this war of cruel destruction and killing – because it is so typical for Pentagon-driven wars of annihilation. Yugoslavia, a socialist country, in the 1970s and 80s under Maoist President Tito, had a prosperous economy, much more so than the rest of Europe. The US-dominated west cannot let a socialist economy flourish. Other countries, especially stagnating western Europe, could get ideas.
Remember, socialism is evil. So, with what is today called the “Balkanization” – cut into pieces – of Yugoslavia was the old-old tactic of divide to conquer, as well as by creating internal chaos, the western powers kept control of the people, and eventually NATO was able to advance closer and ever closer to the Russian border, by occupying former Yugoslav republics with NATO bases (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Kosovo is waiting in the wings), in addition to the further expansion east to Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, not to mention the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
This expansion east – ever closer to Moscow, is a flagrant breach of a promise made by the allied forces. In 1991, then German Foreign Minister Genscher promised Russian President Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch further east than Germany. In fact, he assured Gorbachev that NATO would not move into what before the German unification was Eastern Germany. This promise was unfortunately never recorded in writing, and Gorbachev was miserably betrayed. As we know by now, a betrayal by the west is very normal. In the meantime,12 more NATO bases east of Germany, including in former East-Germany, were built.
In their 70 years of existence, US-NATO, allied and proxy forces, as well as mercenaries, have killed between 20 and 25 million people around the globe, in wars and conflicts – in the eternal war against “terror” – that was “justified” by self-inflicted 9/11, the start to the final phase of the PNAC – Plan for a New American Century – to reach Full Spectrum Dominance.
Wars have a cost – a financial, economic and a social cost. The US official military budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 is US$ 700 billion; for FY 2019 Trump proposes US$ 750. If approved it would be a 40% increase in the last 9 years. But that’s not all. This is just the officially published figure. The real cost for the war, defense, and security apparatus to which also the opaque CIA and associated secret services count – is well over a trillion dollars, perhaps as much as US$1.5 trillion – per year.
Wars have a cost – a financial, economic and a social cost. The US official military budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 is US$ 700 billion; for FY 2019 Trump proposes US$ 750.
The US has currently about one million military personnel stationed in 175 countries around the globe. The Pentagon maintains about a thousand military bases in more than 100 countries. The war cost, in currently seven war theatres is prohibitive – medical costs for veterans, for social services to returning veterans – and we are not talking about the cost of off-battle ground lives, i.e. by ever-mounting suicide rates. The Veteran Administration released a study that covered suicides from 1999 to 2010, showing that roughly 22 veterans were dying by suicide per day, or one every 65 minutes.
The reality is most likely a much higher figure – and the despair and human depression from anxieties related to the never-ending wars has increased exponentially in the last 9 years – more suicides, more desperation, more broken families – – entire generations of kids with fathers at war. This cost cannot be put in figures of dollars and cents – it’s a social cost that bears its toll in years, perhaps generations from now.
The US spends per capita ten times more than the rest of the world together on military/war expenses. President Trump requests European NATO countries to increase their military budget by contributing more to NATO, first up to 2% of GDP – threatening he may decide to withdraw NATO from Europe, if Europe does not comply with his request, still making believe that NATO is a defensive force – protecting Europe- from what, and from whom? – Good-bye NATO. This is the moment to call Trump’s bluff.
But NATO – the Trans-Atlantic Treaty Organization – has also gone overseas to Latin America. NATO has since 2013 a Cooperation Agreement with Colombia, where the US has 5 military bases – which will automatically convert into NATO bases. NATO is also negotiating with Brazil’s new Nazi-leader, Bolsonaro, to enter Brazil, and, as such being a threat and a potential attack force to topple the Venezuelan democratically elected socialist government. Washington makes no secret – they want Venezuela’s hydrocarbon resources, the world’s largest reserves, gold and other minerals of which Venezuela is rich. NATO is perfect to do the dirty job.
But it gets worse, this Trump clown or the masters behind him had recently the audacity to ask for a European military budget increase to 4% of GDP – or else…. Yes. Let’s decide for else. Good riddance, NATO.
The overall NATO budget is well over a trillion dollars per year – yes, per year. And that is – people of Europe, people of the world! – that is to finance a killing machine that bulldozes countries into the ground with bombs and tanks, that kill indiscriminately civilians and other countries’ defensive military, countries that have never done any harm to the United States, nor to Europe which follows the Washington mandate like a bunch of vassals, what Europe has become.
Imagine, what could be done, with more than a trillion dollars or euros per year – in terms of building up education, health services, public infrastructure, and other social services – and expand these services to developing countries, to those very countries that are now bombarded mercilessly by NATO! – This, dear People of Europe, is your tax money. Do you want it to be spent killing people around the world for Washington’s world hegemony? – NATO does not protect you. NATO has been designed as an aggressive force – you were just never told. But look out of the window, the window of your ‘safe space’, and you will see the squandering of your tax money.
NATO is invading the space of Russia and China, countries that are seeking friendly relations with the rest of the world, they are seeking a multi-polar world, but encounter instead a response of aggression. NATO is preventing the natural, namely friendly relation and trading as equals within the huge Continent Eurasia, of which Europe has been artificially separated as a continent. This tremendous landmass Eurasia, includes also the entire Middle East and connects to Africa. This enormous mass of land and people and resources – does not need the west, the west, called America.
NATO is invading the space of Russia and China, countries that are seeking friendly relations with the rest of the world, they are seeking a multi-polar world, but encounter instead a response of aggression
Wouldn’t it be wise for countries and people of Eurasia, to just live sovereign lives, with friendly interactions, trading as equals not with a one-upmanship as is currently the norm for trading between the rich OECD nations dominating the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the rest of the world- which depends on trade but is always on the losing end?
One more point – that needs to be understood. Europe, the European Union as it was conceived and is limping along today – has never been the idea of Europeans, but was born during WWII in the heads of the CIA, then transplanted into some “willing” European heads and then ‘defended’ by NATO – the “unifying force”. Europe has no Constitution, only a number of non-binding accords, like Maastricht and Lisbon – but no Constitution that holds it together, that outlines a common vision in defense, in economic development, in monetary policy. The European Union results in a bunch of countries, some even hostile to each other. They have a common currency, the Euro, without even having a common economic base and development objective. This currency, forged as the little brother of the US-dollar, equally is nothing but fiat money, no backing whatsoever; this currency is not sustainable. So, the currency barely 20 years old, will eventually collapse or fade, and so will the European Union. It hasn’t happened yet, because NATO is holding it together, because Brussels is nothing but a puppet of the Pentagon. It is Washington through the Pentagon, and through NATO that is running Europe.
People of Europe – is it that what you want? Your tax money spent killing people and destroying countries around the globe, and having lost all independence, autonomy as a country, as well as monetary sovereignty – by being run by a military killing machine, called NATO?
It’s time to kill NATO, rather than being killed by NATO. Exit NATO now. It’s time for NEXIT.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image by © Primanews.org
Timo Kivimäki is Professor of International Relations, and Director of Research at the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at University of Bath. In addition to purely academic work, he has been a frequent consultant to the Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Indonesian and Swedish governments.
From Cool Britannia to Fool Britannia
By Graham Vanbergen
It took just twenty years to go from the euphoria of Cool Britannia to Fool Britannia in the guise of the economy destroying and politically toxic ideology of Brexit. The author explains what may be lurking around the corner in the years ahead.
Throughout most of the 1990s, Cool Britannia was a period of increased pride in the culture of Gt. Britain, which was inspired by the swinging 60s – enhanced by its modern-day youth culture. The iconography of the day was British rock and pop, fashion houses and magazines who rode on a high crest of a renewed feeling of optimism following the turbulent years of the 1970s and 80s. It was all Britpop, Euro96, and Alexander McQueen. The economy and mood of the nation were booming.
The cultural renaissance of London, in particular, was much celebrated in the press, it’s pinnacle reached with the election of Tony Blair in 1997 providing a boost to the feeling of optimism – indeed, euphoria.
It didn’t last long.
In 2003, Tony Blair burst the bubble with an illegal invasion of a foreign sovereign state that saw the biggest street protests in Britain and around the world in human history.
Iraq cast a dark shadow on the nation and when all was said and done, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would be dead. The nation bowed its head in shame. It was rapidly followed by corruption scandals; cash-for-honours, cash-for-influence – culminating in the massively damaging parliamentary expenses scandal. Next came cash-for-influence, cash-for-access – the list of political skulduggery only escalated. Then there were the accusations of sexual abuse and more recently rampant racism in the form of Windrush, Anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia at the very heart of the political establishment. In between all of this – the destruction of Libya was another symbol of Britain’s desperate foreign policy decisions that humiliated the nation.
From 1996 to 2016 – a period of just twenty years, Britain has gone from crooning the ‘Cool Britannia’ brand with a beaming collective national pride to a final swansong of Fool Britannia in the Brexit endgame. National resilience, a characteristic of the British people has been replaced with acrimony and hostility.
After abandoning the moderate centre ground, civil war has broken out in both political parties on the left and right.
In this environment, should it be of any surprise that the most financially supported political figure in Britain of 2018/19 is a right-wing thug with a criminal rap sheet as long as your arm – in the guise of Tommy Robinson?1
Tommy Robinson is though a warning shot of what is to come. He was only allowed oxygen in the first place because of the democratic decay that Britain is now experiencing. But it is the method of his emergence that has to be tackled most urgently. The names SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook allied with the words algorithm, dark money and micro-ads make many who should be better-informed scratch their heads. The police, National Crime Agency and Electoral Commission are slowly unravelling the frightening realisation that Britain’s democracy, like the children’s fable, has no clothes.
Democratic Audit charitably put it that there has been – “active external interference through ‘election hacking’ and other, subtler, forms of meddling.” In other words, obscure wealthy donors, foreign state powers and corporations hiding behind front charities and think tanks have attacked Britain’s democracy – and won.2
Today, Britain has a Prime Minister, who, with each new broken promise increases the loss of political capital that took centuries to build.
Every day, the public is now witnessing the unseemly spectacle of Cabinet ministers expressing fraudulent pledges of loyalty to the PM while vigorously fine-tuning their leadership campaigns, with others deserting the posts to which they were elected.
This has exposed nothing more than the pretence that politicians were acting in the national interest and it has led to a degenerating spiral of growing hatred in society through identity politics, finger pointing and shame-blaming.
At the time of writing, Britain is facing a no-win political dilemma so bad that the government is preparing for a likely repeat (but of a much-intensified version) of the 2011 England riots, which saw looting, arson, and mass deployment of police that ended with £200 million of property damage alone. Its preparations include seconding and recruiting thousands to a new department to determine the ‘battle rhythm’ on the streets of Britain.3
It is also preparing for the genuine threat that violence will emanate from Northern Ireland once again. Almost one-quarter of the domestic surveillance agency MI5 has been relocated there.
It is now evident that the economy will nosedive. This week, the news came that London’s Financial Services industry had transferred nearly £1 trillion of assets to Europe in preparation of Brexit.4
Twenty years is all it took to go from a euphoric nation of optimists at the heart of the European Union project to the crash and burn casino politics of gambling the very prosperity and security of future generations without their explicit consent.
What really happened?
While China builds the One Belt, One Road project – a 21st century Maritime Silk Road, involving infrastructure development and investments in 152 countries with international organisations and institutions across Europe, Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa – Britain has mistakenly backed America.
The Chinese government calls the initiative “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”. Some observers see it as a push for Chinese dominance in global affairs with a China-centred trading network. America sees it as nothing more than a threat to its dwindling economic prospects.
The Belt and Road Initiative is the largest infrastructure and investment project in history, covering more than 68 countries, including 65% of the world’s population and 40% of global GDP.
In contrast, the New American Century was defined not by infrastructure investment to encourage economic growth, trade or cultural exchange but by military strength and global hegemony. It has already ended in disaster and Britain is unquestioningly marching in lockstep with a political and economic model characterised by moral bankruptcy, avarice and inevitable decline.
Brexit is a fool’s game, and the British people have been fooled. It forces Britain out of the biggest game on the global chessboard by default. It also forces Britain to play a game with potentially disastrous economic and geopolitical consequences being geographically located on the wrong side of the board – with our competitors next door and allies at the other end of the road.
Brexit will define Britain for decades to come. So while many may disagree with the sentiment that only bad things will come from it – it is a false hope that it will end in a new era to match Cool Britannia. In the years ahead, the EU may have many problems to deal with but they are stronger together in today’s very uncertain world.
About the Author
References
1. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tommy-robinson-isbest -funded-politician-in-uk-0sm5d0blp
2. http://www.democraticaudit.com/2019/03/04/ democratic-decay-the-threat-with-a-thousand-names/
3. https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/brexit-newcommand- centre-to-detect-battle-rhythm-on-the-streets/
4. https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/brexit -one-industry-one-city-one-trillion-gone/